(04-25) 11:19 PDT OAKLAND -- Less than 13 percent of the gunfire in Oakland's high-crime neighborhoods is reported to police, according to the company whose ShotSpotter acoustic sensors are perched around the city.

SST Inc. of Newark released its first-ever analysis on gunfire in the wake of a Chronicle story reporting that Oakland police officials were thinking about scrapping the 8-year-old ShotSpotter program to save its cost of $264,000 a year.

The report said witnesses report gunfire at low rates in cities across the country, a finding that surprised some crime experts.

"The extent of the underreporting tells a story about communities that have essentially given up because gunfire has become so commonplace," she said. "And that's a sad story."

SST officials said they analyzed gunfire data from their sensors for the first time, drawing from 48 cities, in an effort to reveal the extent of gun violence nationwide.

But the city with the most detailed information was Oakland, where last month police officials said that enough gunfire was being reported by residents to justify getting rid of ShotSpotter when its contract ends in August.

Mayor Jean Quan and some City Council members want to continue the ShotSpotter program. Police officials this week did not respond to requests for comment on the SST report.

The report said that in East Oakland and West Oakland, where ShotSpotter sensors are installed, 8,769 gunfire incidents were detected in 2012 and 2013, but that witnesses made reports of 1,136 of the events.

The level of reporting nationwide is only slightly higher, SST said, with less than one in five gunfire incidents called in.

The company acknowledged the numbers were slightly skewed by bursts of gunfire on New Year's Day and July 4, which are rarely reported.

The analysis concluded that communities with the most gunfire experience the lowest rates of reporting.